Fifty years ago this month, the United States began raining down bombs on Laos, in what would become the largest bombing campaign in history. From June 1964 to March 1973, the United States dropped at least two million tons of bombs on the small, landlocked Southeast Asian country. That is the equivalent of one planeload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years — more than was dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II....

We are joined by Aviva Chomsky, whose new book, "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal," details how systemic prejudice against Mexicans and many other migrant workers has been woven into U.S. immigration policies that deny them the same path to citizenship that have long been granted to European immigrants. She also draws parallels between the immigration laws now in place that criminalize migrants, and the caste system that...

Based on the film with the same name, the extraordinary new book "The Black Power Mixtape" chronicles the black freedom movement in the United States using found footage of top African-American leaders between 1967 and 1975. Shot by Swedish journalists and discovered in the basement of Swedish public television 30 years later, the film features some of the leading figures of the black power movement in the United States, including...

Former presidential candidate and longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader joins us to discuss his latest book, "Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State." Nader highlights the common concerns shared by a wide swath of the American public, regardless of political orientation, including mass government surveillance, opposing nebulous free trade agreements, reforming the criminal justice system, and...

We are joined by author and activist Astra Taylor, whose new book, "The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age," argues net neutrality is just the beginning of ensuring equal access and representation online. "The utopian potential of the net is real," Taylor notes. "The problem is the underlying economic conditions haven’t changed. The same old business imperatives, the same...

Environmental reporter Dan Fagin joins us to discuss his book, "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation," which has just won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. Fagin tells the story of how a small New Jersey town fought back against industrial pollution and astronomical rates of childhood cancer, and ultimately won one of the largest legal settlements in U.S. history. "We don’t look for patterns, we...

In an exclusive interview, Chilean novelist Isabel Allende remembers the life and legacy of late writer Gabriel García Márquez. She reads from his landmark novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and talks about how García Márquez influenced generations of thinkers and writers in Latin America and across the world. "He’s the master of masters," Allende says. "In a way, he conquered readers and conquered the world,...

Award-winning journalist Matt Taibbi is out with an explosive new book that asks why the vast majority of white-collar criminals have avoided prison since the financial crisis began, while an unequal justice system imprisons the poor and people of color on a mass scale. In "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," Taibbi explores how the Depression-level income gap between the wealthy and the poor is mirrored by...